London, Day Ten

Today was an exciting finale for our English "holiday" as the British would say. We left the apartment early to head over to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter studio tour. This is seriously one of the coolest things I've ever done, although it did tear down the illusion of the magic the movies give off. It was strange seeing how a bunch of different things can add up to one big thing. Hogwarts, for example, was filmed bit by bit at tons of different cathedrals all over England. This is somewhat disheartening for me because I always liked to live in the fantasy of a real Hogwarts. I knew there wasn't one, obviously. Seeing all of the different places filming was done was just kind of sad for me, tearing the castle I had pictured in my mind apart, bit by bit.

Outside the entrance of the tour

Here is mom in front of the only "put together" view of Hogwarts that they used for filming. This was used for landscape shots of the castle. This is the largest scale model of Hogwarts. Definitely a sight to see.

On a lighter note, however, there were a bunch of cool sets still kept in tact from when they were last filming. I actually got to go into the great hall, which was a "hot set" meaning it was ready and set for filming; props in the correct location, lighting good to go, etc. Although, the entire ceiling for the great hall was done with CGI so there was no roof, but rather a bunch of piping instead. Like I said, the illusion of Hogwarts has been dismantled pretty solidly.

They had corners of the Great Hall set up with different house robes. Naturally, I had to have my picture with the Ravenclaw corner.

Casually taking a selfie in the Mirror of Erised

The Black family tapestry was a real tapestry. Not just some fake wall paper. Pretty cool.

The films hardly used any CGI animals. There were tons of owls and each of the more important animals had multiple animal actors portraying them. It is tricky to see in the photo but you can see pictures of the animals that played Fang, Crookshanks, Hedwig, and Mrs. Norris. Fang had nine dogs portraying him! All of the animals in these films were rescues as well and they found them good homes afterwards.

Me on the Hogwarts bridge

Diagon Alley was also very close to being a "hot set." You can see Weasley's Wizard Wheezes behind me in the distance.

We got to have some fun with green screen magic while we toured the studio. We learned that all of the quidditch/broomstick scenes were done in front of green screens, which was really fascinating to me. They had a green screen experience, which my mom and I happily participated in, putting us in the Ford Anglia and myself on a broomstick in Ravenclaw robes, no doubt. It was a lot of fun. I only wish my acting skills were better to make the video they took of me more realistic.
While I truly could have spent the entire day exploring this studio, we only had three hours of time there since we took a tour bus to the site. Unfortunately, I had to detach myself from the place before I would I have liked, but not without some delicious butterbeer.

Is there something on my face? That frosting was super yummy by the way.

Once we arrived back at the flat, we quickly changed into fancier clothes and made our way to a French restaurant called Balthazar for a reservation. The highlights of our meal were delicious escargot, one of my French restaurant staples and profiteroles for dessert. I was amazed that we managed to get a full course meal in before our show for the evening, but we pulled it off with full bellies.

The delicious escargot! Escargot is best in a garlic butter sauce

Profiteroles! Ice cream inside a puff pastry type thing with hot fudge drizzled over the top. Wow!

We made it to the theater just in time for our show, Stomp London. Let me tell you, this is one of the coolest things I have ever witnessed. If you find yourself in London and wanting to see a show, you cannot pass this up! Despite the cramped theater, there was rhythmical magic in the air that evening. No words were spoken ever. Only the occasional grunt. If you have any appreciation for percussion, then you would love this. The props the actors "stomped" with ranged from plastic bags to giant rubber inner tubes. Anything and everything on stage was used to make rhythm at one point. One of my particular favorites was a number they did with the opening, closing, and lighting of zippo lighters. I'm telling you, don't miss this show if you have the opportunity. I see myself in attendance again the next time I am in London for sure.

What a great day to top off our adventures in England. While it is sad to leave this amazing country tomorrow, I have a sneaking suspicion that this will not be my last visit to the UK. I am in love with everything about this place. Well, perhaps not the smoking habits of the people, but certainly everything else. I had the best time here and truly cannot wait until I can visit again. Until next time England, cheers!